The Talos Principle: Game Review

“Even the most faithful philosopher can not live without his blood”~The Talos Principle

The Talos Principle is an amazing puzzle game with a philosophical story. It received overwhelmingly positive reviews all around. I got it on steam sale for 75% of, which was a bargain. It was so good I bought it as a gift 3 times so I ended up paying full price in the end. While its worth the $44 its going for on steam right now, its a bargain on sale. This is a great game suitable for almost anyone with intellectual inclinations.

The story is based on a garden of Eden theme. There is ELOHIM (god) who promises you eternal life if you listen to him. His one condition is that you do not climb the tower. Through the story you interact with computer monitors scattered around the world. These contain various files that reveal the nature of the world the game is set in. Also there is a AI like chat program that you can interact with. The program starts out asking philosophical questions related to what actually is a person so it can give you administrative accesses and evolves throughout the story. The story is really good and made me think about a lot of things.

The game play involves solving various puzzles. As you progress in the game you unlock new tools making the puzzles progress in complexity and difficulty. There are also stars you can collect through out the game. The main puzzles aren’t overly difficult but collecting the stars is. I saw in an interview that they unlock accesses to puzzles the developers found too hard for players in play testing. You can beat the game fairly easy, and there are lots of challenging options to keep you busy for a long time.

^A jammer jamming a mine. If you get too close these mines explode making you restart the puzzle you are working on. The jammer freezes them making it safe to approach.

The game’s difficulty progresses nicely with the puzzles getting gradually harder as you unlock new tools.

I like learning about theology and philosophy and this game integrates them nicely into the story. The game play is fun and interesting, the puzzles are really well designed.

This is a nice video that shows the elements of game play and some of the puzzle elements.

I’d strongly recommend The Talos Principle to people who enjoy puzzles and philosophy, its a great intellectually stimulating game.